With the debut of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon arriving February 17th, and Late Night with Seth Meyers coming a week later, NBC has begun promoting the transition in earnest. It’s first major spots for the two shows premiered over the weekend, and the relatively banal one for The Tonight Show has prompted Variety on a slow news weekend to accuse NBC of “rewriting history.”

The promo for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon talks about the tradition of the show, and in presenting its history of hosts, NBC is not recognized for featuring a brief second of Conan O’Brien, but slammed for not acknowledging the ugliness in the Leno/O’Brien/Leno transition. As Variety writes:

In surprising move (italics my own), Peacock acknowledges short-lived Conan O’Brien period, but avoids mention of Leno’s two runs behind desk … In a promo unveiled Saturday evening, the Peacock depicts Fallon as the latest in the decades-old program’s line of memorable hosts. A succession of graphics lists the famous names: Steve Allen. Jack Paar. Johnny Carson. Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno. … The problem? Leno hosted the show before O’Brien did. Indeed, the veteran has enjoyed two separate “Tonight” runs, from 1992 to 2009, as Johnny Carson’s successor, and again starting in 2010, after a General Electric-controlled NBCUniversal attempted to move Conan O’Brien into the “Tonight” chair while keeping Leno affiliated with the network by placing him to a 10 p.m. timeslot five days a week.

Oh come on now, Variety. Is it really “surprising” that, in a 60 second promo for Jimmy Fallon’s new show that NBC didn’t stop and explain to viewers that, “Oh yeah, Leno didn’t have an uninterrupted run, because we did some weaselly things because Conan wasn’t working out, and we had to rescue our asses.” The promo is not about that, it’s about Fallon taking over. I was more surprised that O’Brien was mentioned at all. I was not surprised, however, to see that the best joke NBC could find to celebrate Leno was the “dry heat” joke (not just a unremarkable joke, but that “dry heat” joke was a one that Letterman used to make constantly in the 1980s).

Here’s the promo.

There was no fake controversy for the promo for ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers.’ It’s just amiable Seth Meyers being amiable Seth Meyers.

One note on Meyers’ show: According to People, he’s not likely to have a band or a DJ on Late Night, instead focusing more on politics, sports and current events. Sports? That’d actually be a welcome change.

Conan also had to deal with Leno at 10. As terrible as his ratings were, a talk show at 10 is still going to take away viewers from a talk show at 11:30. Leno’s ratings would be similar to Conan’s from that era if he had a lead-in. Well, unless it was Chevy Chase.

This is the same backwards thinking that gets all your favorite shows cancelled. Leno is doing fine with overall viewers thanks to old people (and who ever else leaves the TV on after the news) but the real value is in selling internet views. These shows are all about promoting movies, and Fallon, Kimmel and Conan are the top dogs in that game when it comes to selling their brand on the internet.The only people who this doesn’t benefit is the affiliates.

Am I the only one who is surprised that its going to be “The Tonight Show STARRING Jimmy Fallon”?
Conan & Leno honored him by going with the “with” monicker. I guess Jimmy figures he’s been gone long enough.

The last TRULY GREAT talk show host was JOHNNY CARSON… JIMMY FALLON, will never be JOHNNY, but he’s the closest thing yet – if you recall the crazy things Johnny was willing to do to get laughs… JIMMY does that … but also… FALLON has many many star friends , who will probably be dropping in from time to time – hopefully without him expecting… kinda like the Brat Pack did to CARSON, FALLON should have his best bud TIMBERLAKE popping in from time to time – I just hope FALLON does the FULL COUCH thing like CARSON did, because there are MANY MANY laughs that were brought about by keeping someone on the couch and moving them down for the next guest